Elizabeth Power - A Clash with Cannavaro

‘So you’re giving me no choice instead?’ Bitterness tinged her voice as she struggled with his ultimatum.

Another movement of an eyebrow said it all.

As she’d already pointed out, he was rich and powerful. He could tear her heart out if he wanted to. And he probably wanted to! she thought acridly. Instead he was offering her ecstasy. Physical ecstasy in return for not taking Danny away from her. Unbelievable physical ecstasy. And a suitcaseful of self-degradation when it was all over.

‘All right. I’ll accompany my nephew,’ she told him with her voice cracking. ‘To look after him and make sure that where he goes and what he does is in his best interests. But if you think that you and I will be picking up from where we left off two years ago, then you’ve got another think coming! I won’t be your plaything, Emiliano. Not now or at any time in the future.’

ELIZABETH POWERwanted to be a writer from a very early age, but it wasn’t until she was nearly thirty that she took to writing seriously. Writing is now her life. Travelling ranks very highly among her pleasures, and so many places she has visited have been recreated in her books. Living in England’s West Country, Elizabeth likes nothing better than taking walks with her husband along the coast or in the adjoining woods, and enjoying all the wonders that nature has to offer. You can visit her at www.elizabethpower.net

Recent titles by the same author:

VISCONTI’S FORGOTTEN HEIR

A GREEK ESCAPE

A DELICIOUS DECEPTION

BACK IN THE LION’S DEN

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

A Clash with

Cannavaro

Elizabeth Power

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Alan—remembering our lovely days in the Caribbean.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

EXTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

LAUREN RECOGNISED THE man as soon as he stepped out of the car, a shining silver monster of a thing that looked incongruous against the rustic outbuildings of the Cumbrian farmhouse and the verdant slopes of the fells above its wet slate roofline.

It was the man striding across the yard with his hair blowing like an untamed mane in the wind that her gaze was fixed on, however, as she finished securing the stable door for the night.

Tall, lean, in his early thirties, his expensive tailoring could do nothing to conceal a physique honed to prime strength and unquestionable fitness, or those shoulders which were wide enough to eclipse the moon. But he was a man she had never expected—or hoped—ever to see again, and she watched his approach now with a leap of something electric lighting her wary green gaze.

‘Hello, Lauren.’

If she was lost for words, then it was only because she was shocked to see him there on her Lakeland property. A property on which her late parents had blown all their savings to chase a dream of self-sufficiency—a dream that had never quite lived up to its promise and which was a world away from the glamorous capitals of Europe and the far-flung playgrounds of the mega-rich that the man before her inhabited.

‘Emiliano!’ She could have kicked herself for sounding so breathless and for wishing that she was wearing something other than her vest top and dungarees, or even that she had had a chance to comb her hair. After being out in the damp air, checking on the horses she stabled for the few paying customers who helped subsidise her meagre income from the local garden centre, she knew the flaming waves were falling untidily about her shoulders in a blaze of ungoverned fire. ‘What are you doing here?’

A definite wobble weakened the challenge in her voice. But then it wasn’t every day that she found herself facing Emiliano Cannavaro, Italian shipping magnate and steel-hard billionaire. The man who had taken the already international freight and ferry line his grandfather had founded and turned it into a global giant, spearheaded by a fleet of luxury cruise liners. A man who had used his Continental charm and his chocolate-rich voice to lure her into his bed, only to discard her in the most degrading and humiliating way after the marriage of her sister, Vikki, to his younger brother, Angelo, two years ago.

‘We have to talk,’ he said.

She had forgotten how tall he was, and how, without the benefit of high heels, she only just reached his shoulder. What she hadn’t forgotten was how it made her stomach flip just to look up into his olive-skinned features—features that had been redeemed from being too handsome by that slight bump in his nose, and by the glaring virility in that clean-shaven, yet heavily shadowed angular jaw.

She cupped a hand over her eyes to shield them from the low evening sun. ‘What about?’ Her tone was accusatory as she did her best to ignore the effect his sudden appearance was having on her.

‘About Daniele.’

Eyes fringed by lashes only a shade darker than her hair regarded him suspiciously. ‘Danny?’ Her voice cracked as she felt the burn of his hard masculine scrutiny over the flushed, perfect heart shape of her face.

With unsettling thoroughness he was taking in her rebellious green eyes, small chin and slightly turned-up nose with its cluster of freckles that her mother used to say was a sprinkling of stardust, before his gaze dropped with unconcealed insolence to her mouth. It was a full mouth, usually marked by a natural curve, but at this moment was definitely hinting at mutiny as his eyes came to rest disconcertingly on hers again.

His assessment made her feel weak, but it seemed to have no effect on him whatsoever as he gestured towards the ancient farmhouse and said, ‘Shall we go inside?’

Inside? Together? Alone? With him!

Her heart-rate doubled its pace. ‘Not until you tell me what this is all about.’

‘All right. If you want it straight. I would like to see him.’

‘Why? When you haven’t come near him or even rang to enquire after his welfare in over a year?’

If she wasn’t mistaken, Lauren heard him catch a breath. So he was feeling guilty. Good! she thought, cutting him no slack.

‘If I have neither telephoned nor been to see him,’ he responded with the firming of a mouth too sensual for any woman of child-bearing years to possibly ignore, ‘it is because you allowed none of us to know where he was.’

Lauren stared at him incredulously. ‘Is that what your brother told you?’ she exhaled, flabbergasted. ‘Or is that something you dreamed up yourself? Anyway, I didn’t think he mattered to you. Or to any of you Cannavaros,’ she expanded bitterly, recalling how his brother had as good as disowned his six-month-old son only weeks after Vikki’s death nearly a year ago. Still walking with the aid of a stick because of the injuries he had sustained in the car crash that had claimed her younger sister, Angelo Cannavaro had informed Lauren in plain, insensitive words that she could keep the baby her sister had used to trap him into marriage because he was cutting loose. That was the last time she had seen him. Or any member of the Cannavaro family! Though it had hurt her immensely for Danny’s sake, she couldn’t say that she hadn’t been relieved. And now here was Emiliano Cannavaro turning up and accusing her of being the one at fault! ‘You’ve got a nerve!’ she breathed.